Powerball Lottery Rolls Over to $425 Million

Luck eluded millions of gamblers in the United States when there was no weekly winner in the Powerball lottery, and so the grand prize for next week will be an unprecedented $425 million.

The grand prize in the Powerball lottery, which is played in 42 states and the District of Columbia, would have been won last Saturday night if anyone had bought a ticket the previous week bearing the numbers 22-32-37-44-50 and the additional Powerball number 34, but lottery organizers said that nobody selected the winning combination.

Although nobody won the grand prize, 11 people did correctly select the first five numbers and won $1 million each.

Powerball said that those prizes went to individual bettors in Arizona, Florida, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, two people in New Jersey and three in New York.

Another 90 players guessed four numbers and the Powerball number correctly and took home $10,000 each.

The next Powerball round will take place on Wednesday and organizers calculate that, due to an anticipated increase in ticket sales, the grand prize for next week will climb to about $425 million.

This lottery offers winners options as to how they want to receive their prizes: they can take a lump sum in cash or spread the payments out over 10, 20 or 30 years. The grand prize amount will be fully paid out if the fortunate winner is patient and agrees to accept annual payments over three decades.

If there is just a single winner on Wednesday - because more than one person can share the grand prize if they individually select the winning number combination - and they opt to take the money all at once and in cash, they would receive at least $278.3 million.